> “DEFIANCE” part two! With his new team assembled, Deathstroke takes Team Defiance on their first mission to retake control of a U.S. Embassy held hostage in a small foreign country. But while the team fights for their lives against a mysterious new villain known as the Radiant Man, Slade abandons his team to address some unfinished business with an old friend: Dr. Light!

In hindsight that cover is surprisingly accurate in it's symbolism. This ish was a fun getting-to-know-you, Defiance. Almost as good as the 'relaunch' in #21. Usually hate prolonged Holodeck-like sequences but this whole story of Slade's team vs The Radiant Ones was pretty good and ended with the neat surprise that it was a Danger Room exercise but with an edge - Defiance weren't told. The most engaging part of the book was the sit down conversation between Deathstroke and Dr. Light! Their explaining to each other of where they are at this point in their lives seemed intriguing and genuine. That subplot with The Society making Slade an offer he better not refuse is intriguing.

Deathstroke is the new Aquaman. Passed on the latter to give this a try and it's so much more interesting, right now, that next month this will get the preferential pull again. Presently, getting more on Terra, Rose, Jericho, Fake Kid Flash & Fake Pee Gee feels more rewarding than Mera, that girl from the cartoon Aquaman show, that gruff guy with the scar and the rest of the mer-entourage whose names escape me. It was disappointing not to get any ..err.. dirt on Terra here but she did deliver that funny greeting when she shows up.

[EDIT - Addendum: Maybe Slade won't be a fun protagonist for the pull list afterall. Just read the newly revealed backstory death count he was responsible for in this week's Batman #28, The War of Jokes and Riddles, and it is disgusting. He was always bad but he was never this thug-for-hire mentality, tied into Gotham lore, or responsible for such irredeemable/reprehensible sloppy slaughtering. He seems retcontaminated now. Guess'll read Aquaman's next solicit...]

[EDIT - Addendum: Maybe Slade won't be a fun protagonist for the pull list afterall. Just read the newly revealed backstory death count he was responsible for in this week's Batman #28, The War of Jokes and Riddles, and it is disgusting. He was always bad but he was never this thug-for-hire mentality, tied into Gotham lore, or responsible for such irredeemable/reprehensible sloppy slaughtering. He seems retcontaminated now. Guess'll read Aquaman's next solicit...]

To be fair the writer on the Batman comic doesn't seem to be aware that the Deathstroke Christopher Priest is writing and favors is the very one that Marv Wolfman and George Perez created and what readers came to like, he is quite different to the reprehensible bandit seem roaming the DCU these last years and a thoughtless massacre such as the one Batman claims is way way out of step with the 'Rebirth' ethic and what Priest is writing him to be. Ruthlessly efficient and cold he may be, but unprofessional and careless enough to fight Deadshot in such a manner and at the needless expense of ordinary everyday pedestrians is as far away from the spirit of Wolfman and Priest's professionally minded Slade Wilson as I can imagine...

[EDIT - Addendum: Maybe Slade won't be a fun protagonist for the pull list afterall. Just read the newly revealed backstory death count he was responsible for in this week's Batman #28, The War of Jokes and Riddles, and it is disgusting. He was always bad but he was never this thug-for-hire mentality, tied into Gotham lore, or responsible for such irredeemable/reprehensible sloppy slaughtering. He seems retcontaminated now. Guess'll read Aquaman's next solicit...]

Quote:

To be fair the writer on the Batman comic doesn't seem to be aware that the Deathstroke Christopher Priest is writing and favors is the very one that Marv Wolfman and George Perez created and what readers came to like, he is quite different to the reprehensible bandit seem roaming the DCU these last years and a thoughtless massacre such as the one Batman claims is way way out of step with the 'Rebirth' ethic and what Priest is writing him to be. Ruthlessly efficient and cold he may be, but unprofessional and careless enough to fight Deadshot in such a manner and at the needless expense of ordinary everyday pedestrians is as far away from the spirit of Wolfman and Priest's professionally minded Slade Wilson as I can imagine...

Quote:

That is a totally fair point! Understandable to. Still, it's the inconsistent or inorganic development of a character that is often a turn off. It will be interesting if these concurrent takes (albeit different time frames) affect Slade's Q-rating or Diamond Sales Numbers with other readers. It's also the level and nuanced intention/premeditation with the violence of the anti-hero that decides my pull list factor. Many a Punisher volumes have been dropped because he went too dark. It's probably why Doom and Magneto and Lex and Joker can't keep a series for longer than a year. When Teminator had his previous longer running series, wasn't her mostly trying to do good and reforming? This added bloodshed in Batman just makes him less... likable. Why did they even put Slade in the Batman's Rogue Gallery past orgywar? If Wolfman's maturing template was used that would have been... good.

[EDIT - Addendum: Maybe Slade won't be a fun protagonist for the pull list afterall. Just read the newly revealed backstory death count he was responsible for in this week's Batman #28, The War of Jokes and Riddles, and it is disgusting. He was always bad but he was never this thug-for-hire mentality, tied into Gotham lore, or responsible for such irredeemable/reprehensible sloppy slaughtering. He seems retcontaminated now. Guess'll read Aquaman's next solicit...]

Quote:

Quote:

To be fair the writer on the Batman comic doesn't seem to be aware that the Deathstroke Christopher Priest is writing and favors is the very one that Marv Wolfman and George Perez created and what readers came to like, he is quite different to the reprehensible bandit seem roaming the DCU these last years and a thoughtless massacre such as the one Batman claims is way way out of step with the 'Rebirth' ethic and what Priest is writing him to be. Ruthlessly efficient and cold he may be, but unprofessional and careless enough to fight Deadshot in such a manner and at the needless expense of ordinary everyday pedestrians is as far away from the spirit of Wolfman and Priest's professionally minded Slade Wilson as I can imagine...

Quote:

Quote:

Quote:

That is a totally fair point! Understandable to. Still, it's the inconsistent or inorganic development of a character that is often a turn off. It will be interesting if these concurrent takes (albeit different time frames) affect Slade's Q-rating or Diamond Sales Numbers with other readers. It's also the level and nuanced intention/premeditation with the violence of the anti-hero that decides my pull list factor. Many a Punisher volumes have been dropped because he went too dark. It's probably why Doom and Magneto and Lex and Joker can't keep a series for longer than a year. When Teminator had his previous longer running series, wasn't her mostly trying to do good and reforming? This added bloodshed in Batman just makes him less... likable. Why did they even put Slade in the Batman's Rogue Gallery past orgywar? If Wolfman's maturing template was used that would have been... good.

We share the same views! For all the comparisons made to him being an evil Captain America I myself always saw his Marvel equivalent as being none other than Kraven the Hunter. Like Kraven Slade Wilson operates as much a big-game hunter as he does a globe trotting gun for hire. Both are chasing a sense of personal satisfaction to be found in the hunt, in testing their skills and ability while pursuing a craft they take very seriously indeed. Both have adopted and developed a personal code of conduct, often a compromise of sorts between what they see as ethical and what they perceive as being fair play between themselves and their targeted prey.
I often wondered at the similarities between the two as in those Wolfman/Perez years Africa and the adventure of big game hunts was always a background feature to Wilson's private life as much as it was Kraven's...

Being old enough to be there for much of Wolfman & Perez' Teen Titans and then watching the gradual decline of Deathstroke through the 1990's and beyond it isn't hard to pinpoint the turning point to around the time of Identity Crisis, Green Arrow, and Geoff Johns' Teen Titans revival, where the writers involved seemed ignorant to the code of conduct and methods that the character lived by and he was brought into line with the more extreme end of more graphic violence and cruelty that was in vogue at the time. By that I mean to say that, for example, killing Phantom Lady as he did in Infinite Crisis and excusing it as "just business, nothing personal" isn't necessarily out of the paremeters that he lived under with Wolfman and Perez, but that the sheer violence of it and the fact he did is a fine example of how far comics editors and writers had shifted since the days of creators like Wolfman/Perez and were no longer considering what was best for the character and what was wholly inappropriate behaviour to show him engaging in.
It comes down to protecting the character. We embraced Deathstroke back in the 1980's and early 90s as he was unusual for an assassin/villain and like Wolverine the people he went after, and killed, were carefully positioned to be seen as entirely deserving of their fate. If Marv Wolfman back in his early Teen Titans and 1990s' Deathstroke series had shown Wilson coldly and recklessly massacring ordinary bystanders as the recent Batman issue did then that would have been the end of Deathstroke as a fan-favourite... nobody can support or care about such a callous and reprehensible figure as this. And it really says something that no one in the Batman office, or elsewhere at DC, intervened and vetoed this damaging and very uncharacteristic depiction before it went out to print...

I don't really care for the character as an anti-hero. I don't think that too many people remember the 90's series or regard it as a classic (I read a few issues, but I only really bought the Batman arc from around issues #6-10 or so.). I remember Priest saying that he was going to write Slade as kind of hardcore and as not a very good person. Sure, he shouldn't be totally heartless, but Slade is really not a nice person. I was hoping to see a more realistic take on the character, but it sounds like he changed tracks.

He is far more interesting today than he has been at any point in the last two decades, and I say that as someone who followed him through his Teen Titans years and into his 1990's series and beyond.
There's a reason the character found an instant appeal and gained great readers favor through the 1980s and that reason purely comes down to the fact he wasn't just another one-dimensional mercenary doing it for a job and the money like others of his kind. Deathstroke was one of the earliest such villains to gain the longterm attention and grace of a creative vision, of a writer who added a complexity and code of personal practice that others such as The Taskmaster and Cheshire lacked. In a sense you could say Frank Castle was a very similar proposition as much like Slade Wilson he is a cold hearted killer and not one you would like to be around on a personal level, yet as a spectator looking in both of these men operate on a personal code of conduct and are selective about who they target and why. If Frank Castle was seen to be so callous and reckless as to be shooting innocent pedestrians during the course of his actions he simply couldn't function with any reader sympathy or interest. And the same methodology applies to Deathstroke.

Creating a mercenary is easy in comics, making that character interesting to follow, admirable even, well that's something countless writers have tried and failed with... By consciously resetting the character of Slade Wilson to fall back in line with the characterisation set down by Marv Wolfman and George Perez Christopher Priest is acknowledging the problems with the character over the last two decades of mishandling and taking a deliberate course to reset the character back to where he was the most interesting and nuanced.

(And yes, all this being said Slade was never remotely someone to look up to. But thanks to fine writing he was somebody you could still understand.)

Case in point: The Kingpin, Norman Osborn, Lex Luthor, The Joker in The Killing Joke, etc. Deathstroke really doesn't work as an anti-hero, that's why nobody seems to remember his series from the 90's, and that's why they changed him back.

I'm not disagreeing with you, Neither am I arguing Slade Wilson is a wolverine-type figure with a secret heart of gold. My argument is that the names we are mentioning here - Kingpin, Magneto, Deathstroke, The Punisher, Kraven, etc, are more than just one-dimensional psychotic killers without any code of personal conduct or self-discipline. What you have to recognise is the difference between the extremes of what makes some villains more enduring and popular than many many others around them.
Deathstroke began life as a mercenary figure who's professionalism and expertise made him one of the most respected and feared assassins in the world. One of out very first sights of him is of him and his man-servant Wintergreen discussing business ventures while looking down from opulent surroundings in some city penthouse, and that helps set the style and tone of the character from thereon.

The term "anti-hero" only came to possibly apply to him much later, after his 1990s series and before Geoff Johns' Teen Titans revival. As careful as Marv Wolfman was in handling Deathstroke's violence and who he was targeting in that 90s series you are so critical of the fact is he was still the same assassin he was when we met him, still accepting contracts and killing people.
The key point is however that like Frank Castle's victims the people he was targeting arguably deserved what they got, and like Castle the publisher was being very careful in ensuring that. The point I make comes down to image and protecting that image. If Deathsroke or The Punisher were shown early on killing pedestrians through sheer carelessness and indifference then neither would have ever earned or deserved the fascination and support they gained from the readership... it is their code of conduct and why they do what they do that made these characters mentioned here so interesting to follow and study historically.

I'm not disagreeing with you, Neither am I arguing Slade Wilson is a wolverine-type figure with a secret heart of gold. My argument is that the names we are mentioning here - Kingpin, Magneto, Deathstroke, The Punisher, Kraven, etc, are more than just one-dimensional psychotic killers without any code of personal conduct or self-discipline. What you have to recognise is the difference between the extremes of what makes some villains more enduring and popular than many many others around them.
Deathstroke began life as a mercenary figure who's professionalism and expertise made him one of the most respected and feared assassins in the world. One of out very first sights of him is of him and his man-servant Wintergreen discussing business ventures while looking down from opulent surroundings in some city penthouse, and that helps set the style and tone of the character from thereon.

Quote:

The term "anti-hero" only came to possibly apply to him much later, after his 1990s series and before Geoff Johns' Teen Titans revival. As careful as Marv Wolfman was in handling Deathstroke's violence and who he was targeting in that 90s series you are so critical of the fact is he was still the same assassin he was when we met him, still accepting contracts and killing people.
The key point is however that like Frank Castle's victims the people he was targeting arguably deserved what they got, and like Castle the publisher was being very careful in ensuring that. The point I make comes down to image and protecting that image. If Deathsroke or The Punisher were shown early on killing pedestrians through sheer carelessness and indifference then neither would have ever earned or deserved the fascination and support they gained from the readership... it is their code of conduct and why they do what they do that made these characters mentioned here so interesting to follow and study historically.

Well then what would say about Venom then

he's done the egregious thing you're talking about...killing innocents who get in his way (Hugh Taylor the guard at the vault who inspired the Jury for one).

I know that seems like a dumb tangent but I have a point I swear! Deathstroke, Punisher, Venom even Dr. Doom...the code of honor get chipped away story after story makes these characters hard to root for. Eventually they do something that crosses their own line in the sand but they still end up being reset...and their whole code of ethics is trotted out again but by that time we know it's BS. We've seen them break their code of ethics yet we see them regress and then demand respect and consideration for their code. They at that point come of as wafflers and hypocrites. Doom can betray the Fantastic Four again and again and even take Reed and Sue's son to hell and will still be given chance after chance.

This is why redemption stories don't really work for the hardcore bad guys. They work really well for characters like The Thunderbolts (Well, some of them anyway.) or The Sandman or Gladiator (From Daredevil.), but when they try to pull stuff like this with the classic villains, it doesn't work or take, and they always go back to their bad guy status. So, yes, their is a big difference between fleshing them out and keeping them as still evil and villainous, and fleshing them out and changing them into anti-heroes or villains. And unfortunately, many writers seem to confuse that.